If you don’t live in Indy, imagine you have a prominent creek that runs 50+ miles through your state, and dumps into a river inside your city. Pretend there’s a primary thoroughfare that travels alongside it. Picture yourself driving on this road damn near every time you leave your house. You take this imaginary road to go to stores, restaurants, parks, the library, downtown — and since you’ve pretty much always lived near this creek and its road, you have driven on this road literally tens of thousands of times.

One night, it’s dark and rainy, and you take a wrong turn out of an exit you never use. You think it’s not too big of a deal, you know you simply need to find a right turn. You can’t find a right turn. They’re all marked NO OUTLET.
You know why? Cause creek.
When you realize where you are, cause creek, you have a big fat laugh to yourself, because you’re not lost at all. You have surely been driving on the only, perhaps two-mile stretch of this road that you don’t drive all the freakin time.

I came home and I said to The Mister, “I needed to turn right but I turned left, so I was headed north on Fall Creek Parkway and I had no idea where I was for awhile. Do you know where Fall Creek takes you north of Kessler?” He thought for a moment and shrugged.
“No. I dunno where Fall Creek runs north.”
“Past Lake Charlevoix, Brokenhurst, Johnson Road, past Skiles Test Park, to freakin Shadeland!”
Then he said, “Ah! Ahahaha!”

We had quite a laugh at ourselves. Of course, we DO know where Fall Creek Parkway runs north, we drive it all the time!!!
I have been at the intersection of Fall Creek and Shadeland Avenue so many times, I could probably paint you a panoramic picture of its trees. We not only drive through that intersection all the time, but we literally walk under it on a trail.

Now here’s a crude rendering of Fall Creek Parkway, with the key not to scale at all.

My civil engineering parents are scowling, but for the rest of you, it’s enough to illustrate my point.
The road is gray, houses I’ve lived in are yellow, places I frequent are red, and green is the area I travel two to twenty times a week. I’m not kidding. We really do drive it all the time. All the time. Just not that gray section there. Apparently I only do that on accident.

30 Responses to Lost in My Own Neck of the Woods

When Faith and I went to Old Sturbridge Village earlier this month, we went a different way. It’s located inside the intersection of I-84 and I-90. Both highways have an exit. Both exit onto the same road. Both require you to go the same way on that road. We normally take 84. this time, we took 90 and we got lost on the road to the Village.

I can’t help but notice that to get to the places you go, you do have to go through the mystery zone…not judging…

But we don’t. We don’t take the mystery zone. We turn before it or after it depending, and never travel through it. Kinda odd, I’ll admit, but true nonetheless.
I can imagine the weirdness of taking a different and unfamiliar route to a familiar place. I’m glad you made it to Sturbridge Village!

Haha! Yes those count, fersure!
When we first moved here, the front and back hallway thing plagued us for a while. Tryin to pee in the laundry room and “WHERE IS THE COAT CLOSET?!?” were real things. Headspace is always a formidable place to navigate.

That is a lot easier to do than one can imagine. Sometimes all it takes is to go down a familiar road in a different direction or notice a landmark for the first time and your mind convinces you that you are on an alien road. I think Fall Creek is a great road for that to happen on.

Hahaha! I did this a few weeks ago. I accidentally ended up driving at night in the rain and fog. Was traveling a route I take every other week, but because I couldn’t make out the landmarks (thanks night, rain, and fog), I got completely lost.

On my way to work one day, there was an accident ahead of me on the road I normally take, so I figured I’d just turn off onto a side street and wind my way back on the other side of the accident. “wind” is the operative word – those side streets went every which way and before I knew it, I was pretty well lost. Fortunately, my sense of direction is pretty good so eventually I got back to where I wanted to be. It was a little scary, though, because the section of town I was lost in was not one of the better areas.

Kind of like the Bermuda Triangle of Fall Creek Parkway, it sounds like! I have become disoriented in my own backyard before – can’t think of a specific example right now but it has certainly happened! Dark and rainy are the perfect conditions!

*raises hand* I understand totally! It takes me months to really figure out the layout of the place and the little itsy bitsy roads running around it. And well, they should have Google Maps for day and night separate – things look so different, it is confusing even if I am on the right track.

Now you’re really talking something I can relate to because I am a founding member of the directionally challenged. My salvation is GPS and the wonderful item labeled ‘go home’ because I can find my way back from wherever I’ve turned left or right unintentionally. 🙂

Last month, I moved to a new house (temporary), and even though I’m somewhat familiar with the area, I took a different route home one (FOGGY) evening, and ended up getting totally lost and turned around. I was only lost about ten minutes total, but those were ten minutes that were not very fun.

One time I tried to take a short cut. I had no clue where I was and it took me an hour and a half to find that I was far away from home. Never did that again, but that was back in the day we had to use paper maps and I didn’t have one in the car. Wouldn’t have been able to figure it out anyway because I couldn’t even find any little towns. Just miles and miles of back roads.

Truly. Thank you.
One was a state road and one was a highway, and I took the wrong one. I got to see many beautiful horse farms, but it added about three hours (and heavy anxiety) to my trip.
By the time I realized I’d gone off the beaten path, it was much easier just to keep going. I ended up in some small town where the accent was so rich, I couldn’t tell what the people were sayin.

You did a good job of communicating how reasonable yet ridiculous your situation was. Like you, I never had any trouble with directions, and I could always looked at a map and read it instantly, transferring what I needed to my head to follow it. Either from age, or, I more suspect, the brain inflammation from my disease, I have lost most spatial orientation, which has affected map reading, sense of direction, and even how I back up the car. P*sses me off. When I’m fresh I do okay, but otherwise…yikes. I can get lost anywhere. I never panic though. Since I live at a coast (I always know where the ocean is), and there are mountains, and a gazillion major freeways and roads, I just orient myself using these.

Sad, but then understandable, still sad, but then, not too bad.
We really never drive that section. I kinda regret not posting an actual map, but we drive it south of the section and north of the section, never through.
Panic is my constant companion, so I’m really pleased with how I didn’t panic, especially in the rain at night 😀

You SHOULD feel proud for not panicking. It is really important that we congratulate ourselves and reinforce these successes.

BTW, I am, this month, if all works out, about to try my first and hopefully only hit of Ecstasy to try to address one of my companions. Based on a couple of studies, maybe it would help with your friend.

I wish you the best, as I’ve heard many people have had fantastic breakthroughs with MDMA. As a person who is extremely sensitive to everything from caffeine to ibuprofen, who would rather have hourly shots of demerol than a morphine drip, who asks the dr for Tylenol-3 instead of vicodin, who passes out for 11 hours on 5 mg of flexeril, I can say that I would not like to try MDMA. I don’t even like to try new herbal teas. lol
— But oh, how I hope it does you wonders! 😀

I sometimes get forgetful on Columbus but usually know my north and south. It would be disconcerting if one were tired and it were dark. My eyes don’t do as well in the dark, Joey. This alone gets me confused. 🙂 I am glad you and the Mister can laugh and enjoy life’s confusions.